Bush Melon, 2004

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

122 x 100 cm

Est. $4,000 – $6,000

Hammer $3,800

Provenance: The Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime Gallery, Alice Springs, NT, Cat No. 23632 Mason Gallery, Darwin, NT Private Collection, NSW
Artwork story: The bush melon grows from a small shrub found only in the country of Atnwengerrp. Once abundant in the summer season, it is now very hard to find. Women collected the fruit green and left it to ripen to brown, scraped out the small black seeds, and ate the flesh immediately or skewered pieces onto wood to dry against the leaner months. Pwerle came to acrylic on canvas through batik, producing work in the 1980s for the Robert Holmes à Court Collection, and the visual language fully established by 2004 carries both histories: the body design and the harvested land moving together as a single gesture, indivisible. Great curving arcs of yellow, orange, red and deep burgundy sweep the canvas in continuous lateral motion, each form a loose open oval pressing against the next with the freedom and authority that characterised her work from the outset. Her Awelye-Atnwengerrp Dreaming carries the designs painted on the upper bodies of women during ceremony, and in Bush Melon the two are not separate subjects.

Click to enlarge

Sale 3 · Lot 68

c.1920 – 2006

synthetic polymer paint on canvas

122 x 100 cm

Est. $4,000 – $6,000

Hammer $3,800

Provenance: The Australian Aboriginal Dreamtime Gallery, Alice Springs, NT, Cat No. 23632 Mason Gallery, Darwin, NT Private Collection, NSW
Artwork story: The bush melon grows from a small shrub found only in the country of Atnwengerrp. Once abundant in the summer season, it is now very hard to find. Women collected the fruit green and left it to ripen to brown, scraped out the small black seeds, and ate the flesh immediately or skewered pieces onto wood to dry against the leaner months. Pwerle came to acrylic on canvas through batik, producing work in the 1980s for the Robert Holmes à Court Collection, and the visual language fully established by 2004 carries both histories: the body design and the harvested land moving together as a single gesture, indivisible. Great curving arcs of yellow, orange, red and deep burgundy sweep the canvas in continuous lateral motion, each form a loose open oval pressing against the next with the freedom and authority that characterised her work from the outset. Her Awelye-Atnwengerrp Dreaming carries the designs painted on the upper bodies of women during ceremony, and in Bush Melon the two are not separate subjects.